Quotes by American Authors - Page 1756

I thought of all the others who had tried to tie her to the ground and failed. So I resisted showing her the songs and poems I had written, knowing that too much truth can ruin a thing. And if that meant she wasn't entirely mine, what of it? I would be the one she could always return to without fear of recrimination or question. So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game. But there was always a part of me that hoped for more, and so there was a part of me that was always a fool.
Patrick Rothfuss
Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of the devil; but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That's because only a real artist knows the anatomy of the terrible, or the physiology of fear.
H.P. Lovecraft
You know there’s always prejudice in a revolutionary movement.
Ursula K Le Guin
And because his narrator was characterized above all by his anxiety regarding the disconnect between his internal experience and his social self-presentation, the more intensely the author worried about distinguishing himself from the narrator, the more he felt he had become him.
Ben Lerner
Or maybe he means in a richer world the begging population is melting away. But no to that too. So maybe, perhaps, he means there aren't many 'human beings' left to look, see, and understand well enough for one to ask and one to give. Everyone busy, running, jumping, there's no time to study one another. But I guess that's bilge and hogwash, slop and sentiment.
Ray Bradbury
Parents are programmed to want the best for their kids, regardless of what they get in return. That's what love is supposed to be like, right? But in fact, if you think about it, that's kind of a strange belief. Given what we know about the way people really are. Selfish and shortsighted and egotistical and needy. Why should being a parent, in and of itself, somehow confer superior-personhood on everybody who tries it? Obviously it doesn't.
Jonathan Franzen
It is very much in the interest of the food industry to exacerbate our anxieties about what to eat, the better to then assuage them with new products.
Michael Pollan
But the wireless," asked Momulla. "What has the wireless to do with our remaining here?" "Oh yes," replied Gust, scratching his head. He was wondering if the Maori were really so ignorant as to believe the preposterous lie he was about to unload upon him. "Oh yes! You see every warship is equipped with what they call a wireless apparatus. It lets them talk to other ships hundreds of miles away, and it lets them listen to all that is said on these other ships.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
It is in your replanting or transplanting that you can do some of your best work and expand your roots to grow, thrive, and flourish. Whether you have needed to change places physically or metaphorically, replanting and putting down new roots will encourage new possibilities.
Susan C.Young
This, it occurred to me, this was the undisciplined human community that, fired by its dull collective wit, now drove the armed nation towards it knew-not-what sort of epic martial cataclysm: a massive flailing organism with all the rectitude and foresight of an untrained puppy.--In the private letters of Albert Sloane, by permission of the Sloane family.
George Saunders
It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it?—No, not exactly. It cannot love me that way; it has no arms. But sometimes I do feel its presence to be a sort of wink—Here you are again, it says, and so am I.
Maggie Nelson
Don’t limit yourself by what you’ve achieved. All your past achievements are only stepping stones for the greatness to come.
LaShawnda Jones
The question isn't who will be with me in life, rather how will I create the ending I am proud of?
Shannon L. Alder
When you loved someone and had to let them go, there will always be that small part of yourself that whispers, "What was it that you wanted and why didn't you fight for it?
Shannon L. Alder
29. Most loneliness results from insulation rather than isolation. In other words, we are lonely because we insulate ourselves, not because others isolate us.
James C. Dobson
Shaking herself, Petunia looked around. Several of her sisters had been talking to her, but she hadn't heard them. "And that answers our questions about why he gave himself up," Poppy was saying, a smile turning up one corner of her mouth as she looked at Petunia. "Now if everyone could please avoid saying his name [Oliver], so that Petunia doesn't drift off again...?
Jessica Day George
New Yorkers are so impersonal if it wasn't for muggings there wouldn't be any contact at all!
Robert Orben
Admire and adore the Author of the telescopic universe, love and esteem the work, do all in your power to lessen ill, and increase good, but never assume to comprehend.
John Adams
Poetry is a finikin thing of airThat lives uncertainly and not for longYet radiantly beyond much lustier blurs.
Wallace Stevens
Too many people are endowed with a feeling of entitlement, but born without God-given empathy.
C. JoyBell C.
Honesty is one of the key elements to a great relationship. If you cannot be honest with your partner, stay single.
Kemi Sogunle
One must always forgive another's passion.
Pat Conroy
Wait.” Stefan’s voice was hard suddenly. Bonnie and Elena turned back and froze, embracing each other, trembling. “What is your—your father—going to do to you when he finds out that you allowed th
L.J. Smith
Healing happens when we recognize that the world our ego sees is a world of projection. The world our soul perceives is a revelation of great truth, love and beauty.
Catherine Carrigan
Leave people to their opinions and judgments. They cannot harm you; it is their understanding that is faulty, not yours. Leon Brown
Leon Brown
[B]eware trying to bend the Truth to fit your story instead of facing it head-on. That was your father's mistake. And that's how a Snake becomes a Lion and a Lion becomes a Snake. Because the more you bend the Truth to fit a story, the more it turns into Lies without you even realizing it.
Soman Chainani
It's just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants.
Matt Damon
I have managed not to finish certain books. With barely a twinge of conscience, I hurl down what bores me or doesn't give what I crave: ecstasy, transcendence, a thrill of mysterious connection. For, more than anything else, readers are thrill-seekers, though I don't read thrillers, not the kind sold under that label, anyway. They don't thrill; only language thrills.
Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Long dormant feelings poured through my dried-up limbs and wound through me, slowly filling the emptiness. Like an irrigated field, I felt myself blossom and grow with new vigor. He was the sun, and the tenderness he showed me was life-giving water.
Colleen Houck
I've got a theory, it could be bunnies...I've got a theor-Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposesThey've got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses.And what's with all the carrots-?What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?Bunnies, bunnies it must be bunnies!...or maybe midgets...
Joss Whedon
Let dreams shine. Let hope bloom again.
Debasish Mridha
Without warning he had become witness to something that stretched back through the eons, ties both elastic and enduring, surpassing death, surpassing life. She was his child. It was as simple as that and that complex.
Kim Harrison
Dear Dick, I guess it's been a case of infatuation... Mostly this infatuation-energy is about wanting to know someone.... Whereas the sex-infatuations that's male *you, Shake, the priest) leap out of nowhere, based on not knowing them at all. As if sex could provide the missing clues. Can it? In the cases of the males it's like I felt some kind of hint of who that person was floating under the surface. Wanting sex to realise things I knew.
Chris Kraus
God's will has to be done, in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.
Sarah Palin
Of that time, there is still much we do not know.
Tom Bissell
You can't just say NO," he said. "You got to do NO. You got to show it. You got to show you mean it by doing it. You got to show you're not going to do one thing by doing another. You got to make an end of it. One way or another.
Flannery O'Connor
I don’t have enough gross words in my gross vocabulary to describe how gross that gross thought is. Gross.
A.S. King
Beauty had just squatted under one of the chairs lining the hallway. A small trickle was creeping across the marble floor.'She's too intelligent to pay mind to me,' Lady Sylvia said blandly. 'All three dogs are French, and they behave just like Frenchmen. Decorative but peevish.
Eloisa James
All strive for victory. But not all understand what it truly is. To a soldier or pilot on the line, victory is surviving the current battle. To a politician, victory is an advantage one can bring to a bargaining table. To a warrior, victory is driving an enemy from the field of battle, or bringing him to surrender.Sometimes victory is greater than the warrior could ever hope for.Sometimes it is more than he is able to hear.
Timothy Zahn
Black skin was filled with so many barriers, so many restrictions, so many.
Randi Pink
You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.
Seth Godin
Hanna reached for Margaret's hand, knowing nothing she could say would bring comfort. Margaret would never see her grandmother again. Nor would Hanna see her Oma, who had wept when Hanna boarded the ship for America, waving goodbye for the last time. Only the elderly and frail were left behind. And letters from home were not the same as a warm laugh or a cup of tea shared on a cold day.
Meredith Jaeger
You tell anyone I cried, I'll find a dead fish, put it in a sock, hide it in your room, and let it putrefy.""Fair enough.
Pierce Brown
Opportunity may only knock once, but temptation'll knock down the damn door and drag you out by the hair.
Lois Greiman
Unlike Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, the United States was created by an enlightened band of Founding Fathers with a global vision for the new republic.
Patrick Mendis
If you keep doing it everyday as regularly as soldiers go through drill, we shall see what will happend and find out if the experiment succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in your mind for ever, and I think it will be the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you, it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Profitability is the sovereign criterion of the enterprise.
Peter Drucker
Will robot teachers replace human teachers? No, but they can complement them. Moreover, the could be sufficient in situations where there is no alternative––to enable learning while traveling, or while in remote locations, or when one wishes to study a topic for which there is not easy access to teachers. Robot teachers will help make lifelong learning a practicality. They can make it possible to learn no matter where one is in the world, no matter the time of day. Learning should take place when it is needed, when the learner is interested, not according to some arbitrary, fixed schedule
Donald A. Norman
The raising of a child is the building of a cathedral. You can't cut corners.
Dave Eggers
On occasion he would think back to the fiercest passion it had been his pleasure to experience and reflect on what might have been. He would look upon the woman who occupied the opposite half of his bed and feel his life had not quite lived up to the promise of another day. These moments would be mercifully brief, or so he hoped.
Roy L. Pickering Jr.
What I want to impart through our correspondence is that no matter what anyone may be going through, here's the thing: If you love each other, and if your relationship is worth the pain or the hardship, stay with it. The extraordinary treasure of sharing another person's life is one of the most gratifying experiences of being a human being.
Lorri Davis
I was a crazy creature with a head full of carnival spangles until I was thirty, and then the only man I ever really cared for stopped waiting and married someone else. So in spite, in anger at myself, I told myself I deserved my: fate for not having married when the best chance was at hand. I started traveling. My luggage was snowed under blizzards of travel stickers. I have been alone in Paris, alone in Vienna, alone in London, and all in all, it is very much like being alone in Green Town, Illinois. It is, in essence, being alone. Oh, you have plenty of time to think, improve your manners, sharpen your conversations. But I sometimes think I could easily trade a verb tense or a curtsy for some company that would stay over for a thirty-year weekend.
Ray Bradbury
Was there even such a thing as normall? People had terrible things behing their faces sometimes. He knew that now.
Stephen King
This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.
Elbert Hubbard
Great. So basically you're saying your entire family is trained to kick my ass if I step out of line."Sherry tapped his chest with a smirk she didn't quite feel. "AND don't you forget it.""Well, except for me," Colby replied. "I leave the fighting to my man. I'd just slip something in your food.
Rachel Harris
A reaper in a bubble bath? What an affront to the dignity of death.
Moira Rogers
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I think a person can do one of two things in life ... make your own choices despite the past or let your past make your choices for you. Very few poeple go through life completely untouched by something bad. It's just up to the individual on how much of that bad you want to define who you are where it should be that YOU define who you are.
Carroll Bryant
But me They cannot touch, Old age and death. The strange And ignominious end of old Dead folk!
Adelaide Crapsey
It doesn't matter what others think. This is about YOU. Create a life that you genuinely love with your whole heart and start with yourself.
Brittany Burgunder